12.30-1.30pm, Full Sun, 21 degrees
A fine summers day in March. Apparently it almost reached 25 degrees in Kew Gardens, the hottest British March day since 1968. So I came out of hibernation and visited Noar Hill, just on the off-chance that a Duke might have been enticed out by the warmth too. Nope.
Did see 5 Brimstone (3m and 2f), 2 Peacock and 1 Small Tort, as well as 2 Brimstone (1m and 1f) and an Orange Tip in my back garden on my return.
But I did come across a fine mammal at Noar Hill. I have seen Stoat before a few times but never before did I have my camera in my hand at the time. I saw this one the first time scoot across the path in front of me. I froze. I really didn’t expect to see him again but he popped his head above the grass and then proceeded to hunt right in front of me, darting and leaping this way and that. He had no idea I was there. Luckily what slight breeze there was blew in my face as I watched so he could not smell me, and my lack of movement made me merge into the background from his viewpoint. Great.
He rooted around in holes and crannies but found no prey. I raised by camera very, very slowly and pressed it against my nose. I had him in my sights but he was so fast he was difficult to track that way. Nevertheless I snapped away, praying that his speed did not make him blur too much on the images I was taking. I did not have the camera set for fast-moving objects and had no time to do anything about it.
Normally they don’t hang around but this one seemed to like this spot and stayed. Click, click, click…
Then he turned toward me. Oh, no I thought - he is bound to spot me now. Click, click, click...
But no, in fact he approached me. Closer and closer. Click, click, click...
He got to within about 4 yards of me, in plain view on the path before he looked up, right at me. I stopped breathing. Click, click…
Then he realised I was there and made a dash for it, but he didn’t go far. He hid beneath a pile of twigs along the path verge and effectively disappeared from view.
I left him to it, not wanting to scare him too much. I walked slowly on, glancing behind me from time to time just in case – but no, that was the end of my encounter.
But what luck.
When I got home, I had to do a bit of post-processing of some of my pics to get what I wanted. Many of them were too blurred to be of any use and I had managed to get plenty of shots of his tail and no body as he zoomed across my field of view, or pics of him with his head facing away from me, etc – but hooray, a handful were pretty acceptable.
8)Good to see you remembered the method for telling Weasels and Stoats apart; a Weasel is weasily recognisable and a Stoat is stotally different... 
Good to see you finally get an image, ernie. I like the skylark picture too - not often you get to see them perched favourably like that. 
